Friday, April 26, 2013

Welcome to the third and final installment in my examination of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (the sixth Halloween film in the original series) and Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation.
Over the years I've come to see these two films as companion pieces for
a combination of reasons: The timeframe in which they were both filmed
(both in 1994 while they were ultimately released in 1995 and 1997
respectively), the ample use of conspiracy theories made by both films,
and especially their linkage of serial killers to cults. In the case of Halloween 6, which I examined in great length in the first and second
installment of this series, a cult originating from Smith's Grove
Sanitarium (the mental hospital where Michael Myers escaped from in the
original Halloween film) is revealed to have been guiding Michael over the years and through the course of his numerous killing sprees.

While there are some startling instances of conspiracy culture, twilight language and outright synchronicities in Halloween 6 it ultimately pales in comparison to Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. Almost totally unknown to general audiences beyond the fact that it featured Renée Zellweger and Matthew McConaughey in early starring roles, The Next Generation is a truly strange film on several levels. Unlike Halloween 6, which has a dedicated group of supporters, Next Generation is almost universally panned and not without reason: First time director Kim Henkel, who cowrote the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre with Tobe Hooper (as well as the classic Eaten Alive) and has remained closely involved with the series for years, seems generally out of his element in the director's chair.

a young Henkel

On the flip side of the coin, Next Generation was somewhat ahead of its time. In an interview with the Austin Chronicle
Henkel described the film as "a black comedy about dysfunctional
families" and that ultimately seems only partly correct. If anything the
film seems as though it is meant as a total satire of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
even reducing Leatherface to a bumbling, shrieking transsexual
obsessed with acquiring a new face. Several classic scenes and
sequences from the original film (such as the meat hook sequence and the
family dinner scene) are almost totally re-created in mocking
fashion.

the saw as lipstick is as apt a metaphor for this film as any

In those pre-Scream days both audiences and studios alike were confused by the film's comical self-awareness. Even after Kevin Williamson's
Tarantino-lite shtick became all the rage in horror the film's sheer
cartoonishness left audiences cold. As noted above, this is partly due
to Henkel's lack of chops behind the camera -- maybe it was simply the
lack of funding, but the entire film has an amateurish air about it and
as a result what was probably meant to be funny appears to be
incompetence on screen.

Like Halloween 6, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
was littered with chaos behind the scenes. The film was originally
shot in 1994 and did a very limited theatrical run in the same year
as well as appearing in the South by South-west Film and Media Conference in 1995 under the title of The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

From there the film was supposed to receive a wider release, but the studio behind it (Columbia/Tri-Star)
began re-editing the film and pushing back its release date. Initially
they claimed that they were waiting for the release of Next Generation star Renée Zellweger's 1996 film, Jerry Maguire, which proved to be her star making turn as many industry insiders predicted.

By 1996's end Next Generation costar Matthew McConaughey was also well on his way to Hollywood's A-list. And yet Next Generation, which featured these two rising stars in the lead roles, remained on the shelves. The film's producer, Robert Kuhn, told the Austin Chronicle that it was McConaughey's agent who was putting pressure on the studio not to release Next Generation theatrically, stating:

"Then they started telling us that, off the record, CAA
[Creative Artists Agency], which is Matthew's agent, was putting
pressure on them not to release the film theatrically. In any event, we
sued Columbia/TriStar, and then ultimately decided that we were not
going to be successful because the arbitration provisions in the
contract were so strong. We dismissed our cases and are now preparing to
file another lawsuit against CAA, for interference with our contract.
That will probably be filed this week."

Ultimately the film received a very limited theatrical run (less than 20 US cities) in an edited version: The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre version clocked in at 95 minutes while The Next Generation version only ran a total of 86. Unlike Halloween 6,
these cuts do not seem to have dramatically altered the plot line of
the film though they did potentially add to the amateurish feel of it.

Plot wise, there really isn't much to report until the third act of the
film. Up until that point the movie is a generic slasher scenario in
which four 30-something high school students (including Zellweger)
depart from the prom and become lost on a back road in Texas. From
there the inevitable happens: Their car breaks down, they become
separated, and are ultimately terrorized by various members of the
Slaughter family (seriously), which includes: Vilmer (McConaughey), his
girlfriend Darla (Tonie Perensky), and his two brothers, W.E. (Joe Stevens) and Leatherface (Robert Jacks).

three of our four unfortunate youths with Darla, who moonlights as a real estate agent

As noted above, Next Generation lifts liberally from the original Texas Chainsaw
film in a seeming attempt to parody it as well as the slasher genre in
general. Thus the audience is treated to a performance by McConaughey
that borders on high camp (was he trying to out do Viggo Mortensen's turn from the third Texas Chainsaw
movie?) and an interpretation of Leatherface that would make many drag
queens blush, among other things. Still, there are hints throughout the
film that something far more ominous is being depicted in it than a
conventional slasher blood bath, most notably in the character of Vilmer
with his bizarre robotic leg and his wrecker truck that happens to
have "Illuminati" written on the door.

Then there's the appearance of a five pointed star on the screen door of
the Slaughter home that is displayed prominently in several scenes. In
Freemasonry the five pointed star is symbolic of Sirius, the Dog Star.

"To find in the BLAZING STAR of five points an allusion to the Divine
Providence, is also fanciful; and to make it commemorative of the Star
that is said to have guided the Magi, is to give it a meaning
comparatively modern. Originally it represented SIRIUS, or the Dog-star,
the forerunner of the inundation of the Nile; the God ANUBIS, companion
of Isis in her search for the body of OSIRIS, her brother and husband.
Then it became the image of HORUS, the son of OSIRIS, himself symbolized
also by the Sun, the author of the Seasons, and the God of Time; Son of
Isis, who was the universal nature, himself the primitive matter,
inexhaustible source of Life, spark of uncreated fire, universal seed of
all beings. It was HERMES also, the Master of Learning, whose name in
Greek is that of the God Mercury. It became the sacred and potent sign
or character of the Magi, the PENTALPHA, and the significant emblem of
Liberty and Freedom, blazing with a steady radiance amid the weltering
elements of good and evil of Revolutions, and promising serene skies and
fertile seasons to the nations, after the storms of change and tumult."
(Morals and Dogmas, Albert Pike, pg. 15)

Sirius, the Blazing Star of Masonry

Sirius has long been suspected of being highly important to ancient pagan practices, especially those concerning the Mystery schools. Much more on Sirius and the festivities and rituals surrounding it can be found here and here.

But back to TheTexas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation.
It's not to nearly an hour into the film (specifically, around the 55
minute mark) that it becomes truly mind blowing. It all begins with a
strange conversation between Jenny (Zellweger) and Darla while the
latter is helping the former prepare for one of the Slaughter family's
infamous dinners. Darla blames Vilmer's new job on his psychotic
behavior, which spurs Jenny to ask what type of job involves killing
random people. Darla's explanation doesn't disappoint:

Darla

Well, I really shouldn't be telling you this, but you know how you
always hear these stories about these people who run everything but
nobody knows who they are, right? Well, its true. I mean, I never would
have believed it, but its all true. I mean, who do you think killed
Kennedy?

Jenny

The government?

Darla

No, that government stuff is bullcrap. It's these people and they've
been doing this type of thing for like a thousand or two thousand
years... I forget which. And nobody, and I mean nobody, knows their
names. And that's who Vilmer works for.

Apparently this scene was one of the ones edited down by
Columbia/TriStar. It's easy to suspect foul play but later bits of
dialogue are even more revealing than this sequence. Next Generation really goes into overdrive a few minutes later when the character of Rothman (James Gale) makes the scene. His entrance is set up by a re-creation of the notorious dinner sequence from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
with Jenny begging Darla to help her and Darla declining to do so
because Vilmer has implanted a device in her head that will blow it up
if he presses a trigger. Just as Jenny is beginning to call Darla's
story BS Rothman appears.
﻿

Coming off like a figure that has wandered out of a David Lynch film, Rothman arrives at the Slaughter residence in a limousine and clad in a black suit, vaguely echoing a MIB
(Man in Black). It is soon revealed that beneath the suit he sports a
series of elaborate tattoos and piercings upon his chest. The Rothman
character clearly seems to be a play off of the numerous conspiracy
theories concerning the Rothschild banking dynasty.

"Like the German Hanoverian kings, the Rothschild banking empire was
British only in the sense that it had been in England for a long time.
It's roots were actually in Germany. the House of Rothschild was
founded in Frankfurt in the mid-eighteenth century, when a moneylender
named Mayer Amschel Bauer changed his name to Amschel Rothschild and
fathered ten children. His five sons were sent to the major capitals of
Europe to open branches of the family banking business. Nathan, the
most astute of the sons, went to London, where he opened the family
branch called N. M. Rothschild & Sons. Nathan's brothers managed N.
M. Rothschild's branches in Paris, Vienna, Berlin and Naples.

"The family fortunes got a major boost in 1815, when Nathan pulled off
the mother of all insider trades. He led British investors to believe
that the Duke of Wellington had lost to Napoleon at the Battle of
Waterloo. In a matter of hours, British government bond prices
plummeted. Nathan, who had advance information, then swiftly bought up
the entire market in government bonds, acquiring a dominant holding in
England's debt for pennies on the pound. Over the course of the
nineteenth century, N. M. Rothschild would become the biggest bank in
the world, and the five brothers would come to control most of the
foreign-loan business of Europe. 'Let me issue and control any nations
money,' Amschel Rothschild boasted in 1790, ' and I care not who writes
its laws.'"

(Web of Debt, Ellen H. Brown, pg. 75)

good ole N.M...

But back to Rothman. He is apparently Vilmer's employer and their
exchanges are priceless. It begins with Vilmer leaving the dining room
to answer the door for Rothman, greeting him with: "Well, what the hell
do you want?"

Rothman

Rothman, who is accompanied by his limo driver, stares down Vilmer as
he removes his coat and states: "I assume that that is a rhetorical
question." Vilmer responds in kind: "You assume whatever you goddamn
well please, it ain't no skin off my ass." Rothman, who had been walking
into the house, pauses to turn around and stare once again at Vilmer.
"Is that what you want me to think? That you're a silly boy?" Rothman
asks Vilmer enigmatically before heading into the dining room.

There he is greeted by a frantic Jenny, whom he appears to comfort for a
moment while easing her back into her chair at the table. After he has
calmed Jenny down, Rothman turns to face the rest of the Slaughter
family and asks: "What is this?" while looking at Vilmer. After a beat
he continues: "No? Can anybody else tell? Then, to Jenny: "Things are
going to change, I can promise you that."

With that Rothman rises to his feet, much to Jenny's dismay, and takes
Vilmer aside where one of the great monologues of modern horror is
delivered by the man in black:

Rothman

Fuck! This is appalling. You are here for one reason, and one reason
only. Do you understand that? I want to here you say you understand
that. No? It's very simple. I want these people to know the meaning of
horror... horror... is that clear? You don't want to be a silly boy.
Is... that... clear?

Vilmer

Fuckin'-A it is!

With﻿ that Rothman begins undoing his shirt, revealing the bizarre body
manipulations upon his chest and stomach. He takes a few more swipes at
Vilmer before turning his attention back to a terrified Jenny, who he
hungrily licks on the face with his tongue for a few moments before
departing.

From this point the movie turns truly surreal. Jenny is able to escape
from the Slaughter residence shortly thereafter by grabbing one of the
remotes for Vilmer's electronic leg, which she uses to make him fall
down a lot while she flees on foot. Vilmer and Leatherface give chase.

Jenny makes it to the road where she comes upon an elderly couple in a
RV. They are driving so slowly that she is able to catch up with the
vehicle on foot and force her way aboard. Leatherface is in hot pursuit
of Jenny, spurring the immortal line "There is a monster chasing her
with a chainsaw! Step on it Mr. Spodish!" from the old woman in the
RV. Soon Vilmer joins the fray in his truck, picking up Leatherface,
who is then able to slash at the RV with his chainsaw from the
passenger side of the wrecker.

Vilmer
is able to force the RV off the road, which Jenny emerges from
seemingly unharmed. Leatherface and Vilmer prepare to give chase after
her on foot, but then a remote controlled airplane appears and kills
Vilmer with the propeller blades. Leatherface, in full drag, begins
to scream and spin around in a circle frantically as a limousine comes
upon the scene. Jenny takes refuge in the back and naturally finds
Rothman there waiting for her. The limousine takes off, with Leatherface
giving it ample distance while Rothman gazes upon the horror icon in
disgust. He then returns to Jenny and delivers another peculiar
monologue:

Rothman

All this, it's been an abomination. You really must accept my sincere
apologies. It was supposed to be a spiritual experience. I can't tell
you how disappointed I am. I suppose it's something we all live with.
People like us strive for something, a sense of harmony. Perhaps its
disappointment that keeps us going... Unfortunately, it's never been
easy for me. One of my many failings.

Jenny

Fuck you.

Rothman

Would you like to go to the local hospital? Or to a police station?

Apparently
Jenny chose the former as that is where the movie picks up in the next
scene. There she is seen sitting in a waiting room and talking to a
police officer (played by John Dugan who appeared as Grandpa in the original Chainsaw Massacre)
who is saying "You know, this isn't the first time something like this
has happened." Suddenly a wild-eyed woman is wheeled by on a gurney who
makes eye contact with Jenny. The woman is played by Marilyn Burns, who was the protagonist in the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
and the insinuation seems to be that it is the same character. After
exchanging terrified stares with the woman Jenny watches her
being wheeled away by an orderly (Paul A. Partain, who appeared as the wheelchair-bound Franklin in the 'Saw
'74) while the cop askes in the background: "Miss, do you know who that
is? Miss? What the hell is going on here?" With that the film briefly
turns back to Leatherface, who is still screaming and spinning in
circles with his chainsaw at the spot where Vilmer was killed before
fading to black.

Clearly there is much more to NextGeneration's third
act than your standard slasher fare and the viewer is left with a few
compelling allusions, most notably Rothman's description of the
Slaughter clan's reign of terror as a "spiritual experience" and
his fixation with "the meaning of horror." How then ultimately are we to
take Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation on a symbolic level?

As I see it, the film can be interpreted in at least three distinct
ways. On the most superficial level it can be seen as a metaphor for how
the movie industry used to treat filmmakers who got their start in, or
became associated with, the horror genre. Nowadays horror has become a
fashionable steppingstone for young filmmakers on their way to bigger
and better things but it didn't used to be like this.

Frequently once a filmmaker became tagged as a horror director one
would in turn face an uphill struggle trying to find financing for
anything that was outside the genre, even in the case of directors such
as John Carpenter
who had proven themselves to be adept in numerous other styles. In some
cases it became difficult for them to even find funding for a film
outside the framework of the franchise for which they were chiefly
known if they even had offers to operate out of said franchise in the
first place. This was especially true of Tobe Hooper (the director and
cowriter of the original and second Texas Chainsaw Massacre who has remained closely involved with the series ever since) and his frequent collaborator Henkel.

Hooper

After achieving a certain degree of success with the original Chainsaw Hooper would go on to direct two films very much like it, 1977's Eaten Alive (which Henkel also cowrote) and 1981's Funhouse. At this point Hooper got a shot at the big time when Steven Spielberg tapped him to direct his big-budget supernatural horror film Poltergeist. The film proved to be a major hit and Hooper would go on to helm to more big-budget films, 1985's Lifeforce and 1986's remake of Invaders from Mars. Unfortunately for Hooper both films tanked and he soon found himself helming another Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the second film in the series, which did not fare much better.

the downward spiral of Hooper's career

And that was effectively the end of Hooper's career as far as
theatrical films were concerned for nearly two decades. He did manage a
few low-budget releases such as the underrated Stephen King adaptation
of The Manglerand the softcore porn otherwise known as Night Terrors
(which nonetheless helped me through a few nights as a teenager) but
Hooper has presumably earned his bread for years now working as a
"consultant" for the endless array of Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake/re-imaginings.

Hooper at least fared better than his frequent Chainsaw
collaborator Henkel, who has only managed to be involved in a handful
of films outside of the franchise he and Hooper spawned over the
years. To his credit, Henkel did manage to write the scripts for two
films outside of the horror genre -- 1983's Last Night at the Alamo and 1994's Doc's Full Service (both films directed by Eagle Pennell) -- but neither film change the horror label his career was branded with long ago.

With this in mind it is unsurprising that Henkel seems bored with the horror aspects of Next Generation, putting the bulk of his energies into the comedic/satirical aspects. Throughout Next Generation
one can't help but feel that Henkel envisioned a much different film
but had to force the most compelling aspects of his script into the
framework of a Texas Chainsaw Massacre film in order to have any hope of securing funding.

In this context Vilmer can be seen as a stand-in for Henkel himself
while Rothman embodies the studio system as a whole. Neither Vilmer or
Henkel seem to have their hearts fully invested in their respective
jobs, both possessed with a desire to be a "silly boy." Rothman/studio
system will have none of this in turn, having no need of a social
satire penned by Henkel. Vilmer ultimately loses his life for his
silliness while Henkel would not be involved in another film for nearly a
decade and his return was likely only due to the studio system
wanting to slap his name as a producer on the new Chainsaw films to entice the fan boys.

On a secondary level the film can be read as an allegory of the long
rumored underground cult network with ties to various notorious serial
killers such as Charles Manson and David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz. Granted
such theories had only begun to receive serious attention within
conspiracy circles in the late 1980s thanks to the publication of The Ultimate Evil but Henkel is also a resident of Texas, a state that would become especially relevant to this lore around the same time frame.

In 1983 Henry Lee Lucas
was arrested and shortly thereafter began making allegations that
would make him one of the most notorious serial killers in modern US
history. Lucas claimed (or was coerced into claiming by the police) to
have been involved in hundreds of murders during his time as a drifter
in the American South and Southwest, sometimes collaborating with his
"partner" Ottis Toole. As
fantastical as these allegations were, they were nothing compared to
his claims of working for an organization/cult known as the Hand of
Death.

"Henry, as it turns out, has some interesting tales to tell. Just a
couple of years into his incarceration, he told his story in a book
written for him by a sympathetic author. The book, entitled The Hand of Death: The Henry Lee Lucas Story,
tells of Henry's indoctrination into a nationwide satanic cult. Lucas
claimed that he was trained by the cult in a mobile paramilitary
training camp in the Florida Everglades. His training, he said, included
instruction in abduction and arson techniques, as well as in the fine
art of killing, up close and personal. Henry further claimed that
leaders of the camp were so impressed with his handling of a knife that
he was allowed to serve as an instructor. Following his training, Henry
claimed that he served the cult in various ways, including as a contract
killer and as an abductor of children, whom he delivered to a ranch in
Mexico near Juarez. Once there, they were used in the production of
child photography and for ritual sacrifices. Henry has said that this
cult's operations were based in Texas, and including trafficking in
children and drugs, among other illegal pursuits."

(Programmed to Kill, David McGowan, pgs. 73-74)

Henry

Needless to say, virtually every aspect of Henry's story is highly controversial, his innocence being proclaimed by no less an organization than Amnesty International
while Henry himself later alleged that he had been induced into making
such claims after being tortured by the police. Indeed, it would be most
easy to dismiss Henry's Hand of Death were it not for the Matamoros cult.

I've already discussed Adolfo Constanzo's outfit at great length before here, here, and here so I shall only give a brief rundown for our purposes now: Constanzo, born on November 1, 1962 (the Celtic New Year, Samhain,
was traditionally celebrated from sundown on October 31 till dawn on
November 1), was a Cuban-American who spent part of his youth in
Miami. During his childhood he was schooled in the arts of Santeria and Palo Mayombe by both his own mother as well as a Haitian padrino.
He began to establish himself in Mexico City around 1983, where he
first supported himself as a tarot card reader. By 1984 he moved to
Mexico City permanently and began setting up a cult based upon the
Santeria and Palo Mayombe practices he had learned as a child. Constanzo
also began forging ties with drug dealers, Mexican celebrities, and
high-ranking law enforcement officials (several of whom allegedly
had CIA links).

Constanzo

By 1989 Constanzo had set himself up in Matamoros where he and his cult trafficked drugs for the Gulf Cartel (which I documented before here)
while also performing human sacrifices upon victims who ranged from
rival drug dealers, random individuals taken off the streets of
Matamoros and at least one American college student visiting there for
Spring Break. The latter would prove to be Constanzo's downfall as the
college kid, one Mark Kilroy, came from a politically connected family
in Texas that was able to bring pressure on US and Mexican authorities
to find their son's murderer.

Authorities eventually traced Constanzo's cult to a ranch located in
the countryside between Matamoros and the US border. There they found
well over a dozen bodies killed in a variety of ways, including
beheadings and machete blows to the head. In many cases brains, heart,
lungs, and other internal organs had been torn from the bodies, some of
which were found stewing in a cauldron at the ranch. Some victims had
been raped by Constanzo (who was bisexual) before being killed and
ritualistic cannibalism reportedly took place at times involving the
body parts.

images from Constanzo's ranch

The revelation of the Matamoros cult, which came in April of 1989,
added much validity to the accusations made by Maury Terry in his 1988
work The Ultimate Evil and the longstanding rumors of an
underground cult network with ties to organized crime as well as
serial killers. Stranger still was a map drawn by Henry Lee Lucas for
Texas authorities outlining various locations his Hand of Death cult
operated out of, one of them being near Brownsville, Texas, which is just across the border from Matamoros.

"One of the more compelling aspects of Henry's story was his contention
that he had ties to cult-run ranches just south of the U.S. border. In
1989, just such a ranch was excavated in Matamoros, Mexico --just south
of Brownsville, Texas --yielding the remains of fifteen ritual sacrifice
victims. The Matamoros case so closely paralleled the stories told
years earlier by Lucas that some law enforcement personnel in Texas
chose to take a closer look at Henry's professed cult connections. In
fact, Jim Boutwell --the sheriff of Williamson County, Texas --later
told a reporter that investigators had verified that Lucas was indeed involved in cult activities.

"Following the discovery in Matamoros, Clemmie Schroeder -identified as
Henry's spiritual adviser -sent to the state attorney general a map
Lucas had drawn for her in 1985 that identified locations where murder,
kidnapping and drug-running operations were conducted. She told a
reporter for the Brownsville Herald: 'Henry told me there were a
lot of different cults in Mexico who were involved in satanic worship
and everything. I found the map and realized he had marked this cult and
drug ring near Brownsville.' The attorney general's office chose not to
take action."
(Programmed to Kill, David McGowan, pg. 88)

Whether Kim Henkel was aware of these things at the time is difficult
to say but it would hardly be surprising if Henry Lee Lucas's stories
of the Hand of Death cult and the actual Matamoros cult at least partly
inspired the bizarre plot line of Next Generation. In general, Next Generation
seems ahead of its time in terms of conspiracy theories. Conspiracy
culture had just begun to go mainstream in the early 1990s, in no small
part due to the massive success of the X-Files,
but strands such as the Illuminati and especially the whole serial
killer cult notion did not begin to gain much traction until the late
90s/early 00s. What's more, there's a possibility that Henkel had been
toying with such a plot line well before Next Generation actually began filming. Fearnet.com remarks:

"Rumor has it that Henkel had submitted this script to be Texas Chainsaw Massacre III and New Line rejected it. In fact, when Leatherface
director Jeff Burr initially met for that movie, his recollection was
that the original treatment involved a group of kids going to a prom. So
once the rights expired at New Line, it seems Henkel made the sequel he
had always wanted to make."

Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III was released in
January 1990 so Henkel's pitch could have been no later than 1989. I've
been unable to verify whether or not Henkel's treatment for Leatherface included
the Illuminati/serial killer cult subplots, but it would be quite
incredible if it did. Indeed, it could almost be insinuated that Henkel
was trying to make a veiled statement about something.

Especially striking is the final scene involving Jenny and Rothman.
Rothman refers to Jenny's encounter with the Slaughter clan as a
"spiritual experience" and compares himself to Jenny in at least one
instance. The insinuation seems to be that the Slaughter clan was some
type of test which Jenny passed despite the failings of her instructors
and that Rothman is offering her a position in whatever organization he
works for.

Jenny of course refuses and ends up at a local hospital where she
seemingly witnesses a former participant in Rothman's test who wasn't so
fortunate (or who attempted to expose it). The implication seems to be
that the Slaughter clan (and similar such setups) have been
administering their unique form of "spiritual experiences" for a long
time and will likely continue to do so for the foreseeable future . But
so much for the conspiracy angles.

On a third and more abstract level Next Generation and its
allusions to the "meaning of horror" can be seen as symbolic of the
purpose of horror movies as a whole in our society. For any number of
pre-teens they are a kind of modern day rite of passage in which the
viewer overcomes their childhood fears. In a way this is not unlike the
rituals of terror, rooted in the ancient fear of the dark, that any
number of religions have practiced as part of their initiation
ceremonies involving the young. Frequently such rituals were performed
in caves.

"The fear of the dark, which is so strong in children, has been said to
be a function of their fear of returning to the womb: the fear that
their recently achieved daylight consciousness and not yet secure
individuality should be reabsorbed... A terrific sense of
claustrophobia, and simultaneously of release from every context of the
world above, assails the mind impounded in those more than absolutely
dark abysses, where darkness no longer is an absence of light but an
experienced force. And when a light is flashed to reveal the beautifully
painted bulls and mammoths, flocks of reindeer, trotting ponies, woolly
rhinos, and dancing shamans of those caves, the images smite the mind
as indelible imprints. It is obvious that the idea of
death-and-rebirth, rebirth through ritual and with a fresh
organization of profoundly impressed sign stimuli, is an extremely
ancient one in the history of culture, and that everything was done,
even in the period of the paleolithic caves, to inspire in the youngster
being symbolically killed a reactivation of their childhood fear of the
dark. The psychological value of such a 'shock treatment' for the
shattering of a no longer wanted personality structure appears to have
been methodically utilized in time-tested pedagogical crisis of
brainwashing and simultaneously reconditioning of the IRMs, for the
conversion of babes to men, dependable hunters, and courageous defenders
of the tribe."

(Masks of God: Volume I, Joseph Campbell, pgs. 65-66)

The similarities between the paleolithic caves in which these rituals
were performed and modern day movie theater should be obvious. In this
way virtually all movies are a type of initiation, but horror films with
their emphasis on terror seem especially close to their prehistoric
predecessors. In our modern society they are a way of overcoming our
fears of the dark and the monsters which reside within. They also have
the added benefit of desensitizing us to violence and death via their
"shock treatment," though whether this is for good or ill is highly
debatable. Perhaps then in this interpretation we find the "meaning of
horror" that Rothman spoke of.

Taken on this level Henkel's take on horror in Next Generation
seems to be either a rejection or mockery of this form of initiation.
Or perhaps Henkel himself failed his initiation into the studio system
because of insistence upon being a "silly boy." Either way, it
certainly makes for far more profound thinking than one would imagine a
film of this nature would inspire.

And it is at this point that I shall wrap things up. over the course of
this series we have seen some quite remarkable instances of
synchronicity and zeitgeist and some most unexpected places. But then
again, as we've seen over the course of this series, horror films (much
like other much-maligned genres such as science fiction and
fantasy) into something very primitive in the human experience,
especially in a spiritual sense. It is not then surprising that so many
horror films have achieved an iconic status that more "serious" films
could ever hope for.